Russia Week (Three): They Minded My Business

One day, still in training in Artyom in the summer of 1995, I was walking down a street, after school was out for the day, with two fellow female volunteers. So ... not fellows. Women. But fellow volunteers. Christina and Lynda. Who were female. Or would that be "female fellow volunteers?"

I'm lost. Whatever. You get the idea. 

All of us had been in school in the US less than three months earlier — I in graduate school in St. Louis, they elsewhere as undergraduates, so we were walking down the main street in Artyom, as both male and female American students are wont to do, with our backpacks slung over our shoulders.

All of a sudden a man we had never seen before ran right across the street, against traffic, stormed up to me, punched me fairly seriously on the shoulder, yelled at me, and stalked off.

Again, I was dumbfounded. After he left, Fellow Female (Female Fellow?) Volunteer Lynda explained that he had been outraged by the fact that I wasn't carrying their backpacks, and felt it necessary to upbraid me for my ... I guess, laziness and rudeness. I felt suitably chastened, although I felt obliged to point out to my friends that, had I offered to carry their backpacks, they certainly would have refused. And for all he knew I had asked! They agreed amiably.

(Though I've always wondered whether, in fact, that was a self-serving defense I was offering up. Perhaps I should have offered anyway? Would life in America be a bit easier if people at least offered to do kindnesses for each another, even if those offers happened to match traditional gender roles? Is life that much better with men not offering their seats on the bus to female passengers, or holding doors open? Thoughts for another time.)

Anyway, I was eventually to learn that this form of social correction by strangers, which we in America think of as "busy-bodiness" and "none of your business," is — or was then, at least — not only much more common in Russia, but was considered downright appropriate. Adults in Russia felt it was their ... almost their obligation to instruct neighbors (and, if necessary, strangers) when those neighbors and strangers were exhibiting behavior that violated social norms and/or put their own health at risk. "Eta nilzya!," we'd be told, firmly (meaning something like "that's forbidden," but ... more personal, more strong. Perhaps something like, "Not permissible!" or "Don't ever do that, ever!").

The most frequent form this took, at least in my experience, was the older women who would immediately chastise us for sitting on the ground, or on the curb, while waiting for a bus, a ride, whatever. Women in particular, we were told multiple times, could suffer grievous harm to their reproductive organs by sitting in such a fashion. "You'll freeze your ovaries!" American women were told, inevitably, while being pulled up and brushed off — and while it was less clear what the specific risks to men were, it was intimated that we'd be fools to risk it.

Eta nilzya!

This happened so often that, indeed, after a while we learned our lesson. There was no getting around it. (I once tried, unsuccessfully, to explain (with cultural sensitivity!) to someone on a train that, while we understood that Russian doctors had concluded that sitting that way was dangerous, American doctors had come to a different conclusion. The person I was speaking with was less-than-impressed: "But ... but ... it's a fact!" was her incredulous response (i.e., not a superstition), and who knows?)

In any event, regardless of the actual science behind the warning, I found myself charmed by the sense that, whereas in America we immediately stiffen and bridle at the notion that a stranger has any right to correct our behavior or issue a public denouncement, in that world it was literally the obligation of older generations to make sure younger generations ... were corrected and put back on the straight-and-narrow as soon as possible. 

Some value there, seems to me.

Moral of the Story: When out in public in Russia, mind your Ps and Qs, and men — go ahead and carry the bags of your female companions. You may just save yourself a punching!